Academic Standards
A few years back Shintaro came to live with us for 6 weeks on a study-abroad program. Shintaro is from Japan and attended one of the best Japanese Universities in Tokyo. In Japan, the bulk of learning takes place before college and your performance up through highschool determines which college will accept you. Highschool can be a very stressful time for Japanese students, because their academic performance there will affect their entire lives. Shintaro once told me he was a bad student because he only studied 6-8 hours per day. After school. And after baseball. Only 6-8. Well, clearly he was not really a bad student, but he thought he should have studied 10 hours per day. He was just lazy.

So, now to American academics standards. I hear lots of complaints from parents about their children having too much homework (although I rarely hear them complain about too many extra-curricular activities) - but I've never imagined this could happen. Suing the teacher to restrict homework because it assigned during the summer break. For an AP class, no less. Hey, the education is FREE! Why not take advantage and learn as much as you can? Amazing. (h/t Overlawyered).